For the Love of Making Your Own

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I’ve always loved moving blankets. They’re like industrial-grade quilts, aren’t they? Heavier fabric, no piecing and simple quilting patterns. I certainly don’t recommend them for snuggling under, but they are wonderful for sitting on – maybe as a cover for a dirty or worn sofa or even on the floor for an indoor picnic. You could even use one on a table. They are good for so much more than moving. Especially if you make them yourself. Think of the […]

It is only mid-August, but already school has sprung where we live. I have mixed feelings about school beginning in August. Summer seems left behind too early and yet the freedom of it … for parents anyway. I love to help Samantha trick out her new school accessories. When she picked out this pencil box at Target I knew I had the perfect embellishment for it: my Slätthult butterfly stickers (made in France!) that I picked up at IKEA a […]

This is a great spool knitting project for spiffing up the poles in your life – lamp poles, table legs, etc. And this particular spool knitter uses narrower craft sticks that can take your knitting to new levels of tightness. They are so narrow, however, and I’ve placed them so close together that the duct tape surrounding them does not actually adhere to the toilet paper tube. So I put the rubber bands I used to allow me to position […]

Samantha talked me into buying the Emmie curtains shown in the IKEA promotional photo above a while back. I was surprised she was so taken with them. They do not contain her preferred colors and are not her typical style, but I couldn’t deny that there was something special about them. Something old-fashioned and lovely and soft. I knew we probably wouldn’t use them in her room, but I was happy that she was responding to that special thing about […]

For some reason, when everyone else seems to get their worst colds and illnesses during the winter or spring months, I seem to get mine in the month of July. I am just recovering from one now. It caught me completely off-guard, but at least it provided me the opportunity to be still and work on an embroidery project that I’ve been meaning to get to. Have you seen this pillow at IKEA? It’s the Eivor, a 16×20″ pillow with […]

Samantha and I ate lunch at our favorite spot yesterday, the IKEA cafeteria*. Because we were at IKEA primarily to eat, I spoke those words that are so often said, but so not often lived by, “we’re just going to look; we’re not going to buy anything″. We made it all the way through the showroom, the newly remodeled marketplace, and the warehouse with not one single thing to purchase, but right before we got to the registers, we found […]

These are inexpensive nutcracker ornaments from Michaels that I turned into a set of place card holders with those miniature wooden clothespins that you can find at craft stores. Such a snap to make; wouldn’t a set of these make a fun gift? Crate & Barrel had some nutcrackers in white and silver and gold that were a little more expensive, but they’d make a beautiful set too. I might see if they still have some of those at the […]

We had a little drinks party yesterday to welcome some school friends who just moved into the neighborhood. Since our house is oriented perpendicular to the street we have an awfully long driveway; it’s fun to put that real estate to use for something other than cars now and then. A driveway party is also nice because it means you don’t have to clean your house (well maybe the bathroom) or worry about what to do with people’s kids (let […]

Now this is something I’ve been planning to do for ages, this dish mat. I just dispensed with the yucky dish drain system I’ve used for years. You know the one with the plastic mat and the coated wire rack. That system had so many problems: the coating on the rack was chipped, the mat would get covered with hard water deposits, and the water from the draining dishes would run under the mat and pretty much just stay there […]